Computer users frequently utilize computing devices connected to networks, such as the Internet, to receive local, regional, and even global information. In the example of the Internet, millions of web pages are available as a source of news content. These web pages take many forms, including, for example, articles, blurbs, and web logs (“blogs”), among others. In general, news content is published by inserting it into a web page (e.g., coding it into a HyperText Markup Language (HTML) file), which can then be viewed by any end user having a web browser.
However, there are drawbacks to this approach. Users who wish to see content from a variety of sources must typically visit many different web sites. This is very time consuming, especially if the user is interested in many different types of content and/or sources. In response, “feeds” have been developed as a way to publish news content in a structured format that facilitates identification and analysis. A feed (also known as a “news feed” or “blog feed”) can contain articles (content items), meta-data about the articles (e.g., title, date, and author), and/or meta-data about the feed itself (e.g., title, URL, and last-updated timestamp). Some feeds are described by Resource Description Framework (RDF) statements and/or encoded using extensible Markup Language (XML) (such as, e.g., the XML syntax RDF/XML). These features of feeds make it easier for applications to automatically collect and evaluate news content for presentation to the user.
The term “syndication XML” refers to XML that has been developed for feeds, such as Atom and RSS (“Really Simple Syndication,” “Rich Site Summary,” or “RDF Site Summary”). Since the general structure of a feed is known, it is possible to identify the news content within it. Software applications have been developed that work with content published using syndication XML.
One feature of such applications enables a user to view the content of a feed in a way that is more user-friendly than a raw XML (text) file. (Syndication XML identifies content, without requiring that the content be displayed in any particular way.) Applications and/or application handlers, commonly known as “feed viewers,” “feed readers,” or “feed aggregators,” are capable of reading the syndication XML and presenting it to the user. These applications, which can be implemented as (for example) stand-alone applications or web browser plug-ins, often contain useful user interface controls for facilitating navigation, searching, and the like with respect to news feeds.
While feeds have made it easier to access content, such as news articles, existing techniques for presenting and preserving news feeds have some disadvantages. One problem is that many feeds are merely presented to the user as a “pop-up”, wherein a window is presented to a user for a brief period of time and disappears if not selected or otherwise activated by the user. Therefore, users that may be away from the computer device, albeit temporarily, may not see or otherwise be notified of the RSS content. In other techniques, the content of a feed is received and stored for later review by the user. Due to the unpredictable nature of feed content, such as for example, the inclusion of and quantity of pictures, video, and casts, the proper presentation of unpredictable content is limited. One technique, however, allows the user to review the stored content in a column-wise review panel. Further techniques allow unread content to be displayed differently than the read content. While these attempts have their merits, they also suffer from drawbacks. For example, arranging the feed content is a column-like format is not aesthetically pleasing to the user and upon updating the content, the ordering of the content may change, thus further confusing the reader. This is further complicated by attempting to arrange different media content in a standard format.